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Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Indie Book Buzz: Soho Teen

It's the return of the Indie Book Buzz here at TNBBC. Over the next few weeks, we will be inviting members of the small press publishing houses to share which of their upcoming releases they are most excited about!

Ah, Relic! My favorite book we’re publishing this Fall,
featuring a medieval society familiar to epic fantasy readers—but this society
actually exists in our future. After a catastrophic flood destroyed most of the
population and subsequently froze, the Aerie chose to reorganize at our North
Pole as a medieval society, believing that technology is what brought their
ancestors to grief. And so they’ve remained for more than 400 years. This is a
fantastic mix of the intrigue and high stakes that people love about Game of
Thrones and the pulse-pounding thrills from dystopians like
Divergent—I especially like that comparison because like Tris, Eva
doesn’t start out a hardened warrior—she has to step up and make it happen in
order to survive.

About
the book: When Eva’s twin brother, Eamon, falls to his death just a few
months before he is due to participate in The Testing, no one expects Eva to
take his place. She’s a Maiden, slated for embroidery classes, curtseys, and
soon a prestigious marriage befitting the daughter of an Aerie ruler. But Eva
insists on honoring her brother by becoming a Testor. After all, she wouldn’t be
the first Maiden to Test, just the first in 150 years. Eva knows the Testing is
no dance class. Gallant Testors train for their entire lives to search icy
wastelands for Relics: artifacts of the early 21st century, when The
Healing drowned the world. Out in the Boundary Lands, Eva must rely on every
moment of the lightning-quick training she received from Lukas—her servant, a
Boundary native, and her closest friend now that Eamon is gone. But there are
threats in The Testing beyond what Lukas could have prepared her for. And no one
could have imagined the danger Eva unleashes when she discovers a Relic that
shakes the Aerie to its core.

This is a lyrical, lushly written historical set in the
punk-tastic early ’80s in NYC, a new breed of spy novel for lovers of the TV
show The Americans, Bolshoi intrigue, and elements of the
paranormal.

Marina
has trained her whole life at the Bolshoi to debut as the Soviet Union's prima
ballerina: an international star handpicked by the regime. But her mother,
afflicted with a mysterious second sight, becomes obsessed with exposing a
horrific state secret and is arrested as a political enemy, forcing Marina and
her father to defect to Brooklyn, NY where Marina must navigate punk music, the
burgeoning Russian mob presence in Brooklyn, Juilliard, and terrifying visions
of her own.

Elizabeth
is an absolute delight and perhaps the coolest human I’ve ever met. I hang out
in Williamsburg. I know hip. But she puts me to shame. Originally from Virginia,
she now lives in Brooklyn (where she belongs). She settled there after a stint
in Moscow just after the collapse of the USSR, studying ballet at the Bolshoi.
So the details in both the US-set and the Russian portions of the book are just
spot on. Also, secret note? The cover model is one of our former editorial
assistants—we just bought her some pointe shoes, sent her out to Brooklyn with
Elizabeth and they had a blast.

Meredith Barnes is Senior Publicity Manager at Soho Teen, an
imprint of the proudly independent publisher Soho Press, as well as a habitual defector
(ex-Texan, ex-lit agent). Always a bit of a nomad, her reading tastes range
from literary fiction to science fiction to pizza cookbooks—and she’s helped
sell all of these at one point or another.

Soho Press is an independent book publisher based in New
York City since 1986, publishing literary fiction, narrative nonfiction, and
international crime fiction.

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Who's That Girl?

I have been buried beneath small press and self-published review copies since 2009. My passion for supporting the small press and self publishing communities has driven me out into the world wide web to demonstrate alternative ways to spread the word about amazing publishers, authors, and novels you might never had heard of. Feeding your reading addiction, one book at a time.